Higher temps will suit us, that's why Ferrari saw no point going out early I believe. But still qualifying top 3 will be tough, all about timing, coming out as late as possible or when the track is at its hottest.

The rear end is horrible, sliding like on a ice what happened with our great heating up the tires like in wet qualys. Q3 will be probably run on one set of option, 4 laps long.
How many degrees of the difference were between fp1 and fp2?

Car looks a mess to drive, way too many corrections mid corner! Best Alonso can hope for is 6th I think... Behind the Red Bull's, McLaren's and Maldonado. Who knows what the Lotus' are capable of... I hope I'm wrong though.

Vettel on the other hand has so much faith in his car that he can simply turn in and plant his foot on the throttle on exit.

The main problem is the lack of rear downforce which isn't generating enough heat in the medium tyres.. Note the big difference between Alonso desperately trying to scrub some heat into the tyres and Vettel, who seems to have near optimum grip within 1-2 laps on mediums. Although you're right, a few extra degrees should help Williams and Ferrari more than some of the others.. Time till tell

I thought the F2012 was good in medium to high speed corners and also at warming up the mediums. For whatever reason, both are being proved wrong here or maybe I had an incorrect view of the F2012's strengths.

Higher temps will suit us, that's why Ferrari saw no point going out early I believe. But still qualifying top 3 will be tough, all about timing, coming out as late as possible or when the track is at its hottest.

Like I said in the Lotus thread, higher temps will suit a lot of cars. I think qualifying is going to be pretty unpredictable apart from Vettel being on pole.

I'm also worried about that second last corner in qualifying. Better to drive within the limit and sacrifice a tenth or two or push to the limit and risk running wide and losing half a second? I wouldn't be surprised with anything from P3 to P7 this afternoon, though the latter would be a disaster as that first corner is just tailor made for crashes.

Seeing how good the RBR is in low grip conditions also makes me wonder whether rain is still desirable for Ferrari. Really reliability gremlins seems to be the only thing that can stop Vettel now.

I think all cars look terrible to drive, the asphalt is too slippery and it's too cold. Seems to me the Ferrari car can be fast but might take an eternity to get the tyres to work. I also believe it is completely impossible to say how a rise of 6-7 degrees (edit: and continuous rubbering-in during quali) will influence the competitive order, or what will happen tomorrow. Vettel seems to be a safe bet for pole, but I can see Ferrari anywhere between P2 and P15 on the grid.

Edit: And according to george1981 in the FP3 thread,

Pedro de la Rosa has been quoted as saying HRT and everyone else are struggling to turn the tyres on, after 10 laps they come off the car looking like new and that because of that the track isn't rubbering in and evolving as would be expected.

Alonso has a big mouth. Talking the whole weekend how he is confident and not scared and so on. In fact he seems to be under immense pressure and he looks really bad at the moment. I hope he can prove me wrong but it seems that he stands no chance in this championship. This is over guys unless Vettel retires in one of the remaining two races.